Maimonides and Thomas Aquinas: Natural or Divine Prophecy?

Abstract

The question whether prophecy is a natural phenomenon or a divine gift goes back to classical antiquity. A natural explanation of divination in sleep was first attempted by Democritus whose theory operates with the notion of ‘images’ (eidōla) that affect the soul in dreams and foretell the future. Whence these images emanate does not seem to be too clear from the sources at our disposal. Democritus is said to have described them as “great and gigantic … although not indestructible,” and from this we may, perhaps, infer that he associated the images with the statues of gods to which the ancients ascribed an odd assortment of capacities. The ‘images’ may therefore signify certain emanations from those statues, especially since Aristotle distinctly speaks of Democritus′ theory as one involving ‘images and emanations’ that derive from certain objects. The theory thus understood bears some resemblance to what Maimonides reports as the manner in which the Sabians explain prophecy: statues in temples and holy trees give prophetic revelation to people. Whatever the correct interpretation of Democritus' theory of dream visions, its intent was clearly scientific. This first effort to see divination in naturalistic terms—Cicero criticized it as far too crude—was to be superseded by Aristotle's more sophisticated theory in his small treatise On Divination in Sleep which forms part of the so-called Parva naturalia.